The Left's Favorite Righty

"Sometimes liberals get really mad at David because they expect him to know better," Dionne said.

Brooks, who is working on a book about social mobility that includes brain research, admits he is something of a throwback. "This is going to sound pretentious, but I try to be a 1950s public intellectual in 2008, in 800 words."

But he is no ivory-tower thinker. Brooks went to the conventions in Denver and St. Paul, Minn., pumps his sources for off-the-record information and has joined conservative pundits in conversations with Bush. Is he too deeply embedded in the establishment? "We have to get close in order to learn things, but not get sucked in," he said. "Sometimes we fall into the trap of sucking up and censoring ourselves."

Whatever his journalistic gifts, not every audience can be persuaded. After Brooks gave a lukewarm review of Obama's convention speech on PBS, his wife, Sarah, texted him from their Bethesda home: "You are crazy. That was great." What was worse, she reported that their 9-year-old son, Aaron, had said: "For the first time, I really disagree with Daddy."

That, Brooks said, "was like a knife stuck in my heart."

The financial bailout of Wall Street continues to dominate the news -- it does seem that King Henry, to quote Newsweek's cover, is running the government -- and who really knows whether it will cost $700 billion or far more?

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen sees a transformed John McCain:

"I can't help but find it genuinely hilarious to hear McCain rail against the 'Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling,' blame this culture for the Wall Street crisis, and insist that Obama is 'square in the middle of it.'

"He couldn't be serious. McCain has 177 lobbyists working for him, either as aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers. Of the 177, 83 are Wall Street lobbyists, representing the very financial industry McCain is now railing against. McCain is now condemning influence peddling, while he had a high-priced corporate lobbyist overseeing his campaign strategy and simultaneously doing lobbying work from aboard McCain's campaign bus during the GOP primaries.

"Who's in the middle of the 'Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling'?

"For that matter, it's downright hysterical to hear McCain say that Obama's judgment has contributed to the crisis. This would be the same McCain who's teamed up with Phil Gramm -- who McCain has suggested would make a fine Treasury Secretary -- and who really does deserve blame for the current mess."

But Michelle Malkin laments "The Death of Fiscal Conservatism":